After releasing, just today, their collaborative album with Lou Reed, called Lulu, to cries of “Worst Album Ever,” Metallica are back in the studio apparently trying hard to make you forget about that album and make you remember that their last studio album was seen by many as a return to form.

“We’ve been busy writing and recording,” Trujillo says. “We’ve got a couple of new songs we have been working on the past couple of weeks. The writing process for the new Metallica album has begun. We’ve been in the studio with Rick Rubin, working on a couple of things, and we’re going to be recording during the most of next year. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

Cool story, bro.

If you haven’t heard anything from Lulu, you can listen to a track below and make your own call on just how bad it is.

If you’re on the Tom Waits mailing list, today you’ll receive a unique code (plus five codes for five friends) to hear a stream of the album on the Bad as Me website. If you’re not on the mailing list, you can head to the album’s website and request to join, after which you will receive an invite to the “listening party.”

Bad as Me is released October 25 in the U.S., and October 24 in Europe via Anti-.

I guess that video he posted a couple months back about a private listening party weren’t kidding.